The Season of Giving
by Bar Sira
Summary: Founders era. Sometimes, it's not just the thought that counts...


**Author's Note:** Regarding Hufflepuff's accent: I am operating on the theory that anyone who lived in far-northern Scotland in the 10th century and was named Helga was probably a member of the substantial Norse population that Scotland couldn't seem to keep out in those days, despite the best efforts of its king. Therefore, since this is the Harry Potter subcategory, I feel myself under an obligation to at least attempt to render a Scandinavian accent in her lines. If you find this annoying, I apologize.

**Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and Scholastic Books brought Harry Potter to life on June 30, 1997. I can't remember what I was doing that day, but I'm fairly sure I wasn't helping them.

* * *

"All right, den, let's get started," said Helga Hufflepuff, glancing up from the array of vials on her desk. "Since you have probably not spent your Christmas holidays memorising de curative properties of volfsbane, dis vill be principally a refresher class, but, if ve have time, ve vill also start delving into de vorld of mixed potions. I hope ve vill, anyvay, because I have a demonstration here dat probably vill not keep until our next class Yes, Bronwyn?"

"Oh, nothing, really," said the dark-haired Welsh girl in the second row, giggling slightly as she lowered her hand. "I was just wondering: where did you get those gloves?"

"Oh, dese?" said Hufflepuff, glancing down at her green-skin-clad hands with an affected air of surprise that made it patently obvious to everyone in the class that the guileless Potions mistress had just been waiting for someone to mention them. "Dese vere a Christmas gift from your Spell-Casting teacher. Apparently he had heard me complaining about having to handle undiluted bubotuber pus vit bare hands, so he popped down to Vales vun veekend, slew vun of dose green dragons you have down dere, and made me a pair of gloves out of de skin."

"Really?" said Bronwyn. "Well, that was awfully nice of him."

"Oh, yes," said Hufflepuff with a smile. "Yes, Lord Gryffindor is really a vonderful man. Ve are very lucky to have him."

"Well, I hope you did something nice for him in return," a Saxon girl named Matilda called from the back of the class.

"Oh, yes, I made a little someting for him," said Hufflepuff.

"Ooh, what was it?" Bronwyn asked eagerly.

"Ah, now dat vould be telling," said Hufflepuff with a grin, waggling one green-clad finger at her. "You'll just have to vait until you get to Spell-Casting, and den you vill see. But in de meantime, let us begin. Does anyvun remember de t'ree principle attributes dat distingvish a potion from a poison?"

* * *

Naturally, after that little teaser, every member of the fourth-year class was simply itching to get to Spell-Casting, and thought it distinctly unfair that students of their year were not scheduled to take that particular class until the late evening. Nor did it help matters that, when they entered the Great Hall for the midday meal, the first and second year girls were all whispering and giggling about how handsome Professor Gryffindor looked "under _any_ circumstances", or that, when Bronwyn's demonstration of Transmutation of Metals went badly awry that afternoon and she broke down in tears, Professor Slytherin sternly reprimanded her for not maintaining "a debonair nonchalance in the face of adversity, the way your Spell-Casting master has."

"Ah, but I was forgetting," he added, with a sly smile. "You haven't seen that yet. My apologies." Which of course only drove Bronwyn even further to distraction than she already was.

It was, accordingly with a sense of great anticipation that the forty-three young wizards and witches gathered into the third-floor classroom. They took their seats on the benches, laid out the scrolls in which they listed all of the faux-Latin phrases that Professor Gryffindor had them use as aids to casting various spells, folded their arms, and waited for the professor to arrive.

They waited for five minutes without suspecting anything amiss. It was only when they had waited ten that they began to realise that something unusual was going on. Professor Gryffindor was admittedly less wont to arrive early than any of their other teachers (largely because a Spell-Casting lecture required little setup beforehand), but he still tended to show up five or six minutes before class, on the off chance that someone had questions about an assignment or something of that kind. If he was cutting it closer than that, it meant either that he was being detained by another teacher or student which was always possible, of course or that, for some reason, he was not eager to show himself to his class until it was absolutely necessary.

The idea of Godric Gryffindor hiding in his office until just before class began was a fascinating one to contemplate, and for the next few minutes the talkative students whispered extravagant notions to one another, while the quiet ones spun even more outrageous theories in the privacy of their own heads. The stolid and unimaginative ones, meanwhile, simply tapped their wands on the desks impatiently.

At last, at one minute to six, the sound of footsteps on the stone hallway floor indicated that their teacher approached. The heavy wooden doors creaked open, and Professor Gryffindor appeared, gorgeously clad in a heavy scarlet-and-gold-embroidered robe, a pair of high, shining boots, a broad belt from which hung his famous sword

And the most bedraggled, ragtag, tatterdemalion peaked hat that ever sat on a wizard's head.

Roughly three-quarters of the class snorted involuntarily, and even Ealric of Wells, who was so astonishingly self-possessed that he was rumoured to be part gargoyle, failed to suppress the faintest trace of a smirk. Professor Gryffindor, however, seemed not to notice the disturbance at least, not until he reached his desk and fixed the entire room with a level stare.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, in a clear and commanding tone, "as your other teachers have doubtless informed you, today will be principally a day for refreshing memories. Permit me, therefore, to refresh yours on the subject of the Indigestion Hex I demonstrated for you during our last class, and to inform you that the next person I catch snickering, grinning, or otherwise indicating his disbelief that Professor Hufflepuff is not the most skillful haberdasher currently residing in Western Europe will receive one right in the belly. Do I make myself clear?"

There was no answer. A sudden, unnatural silence had fallen over the entire classroom.

"Good," said Gryffindor, turning to the sheepskin parchment hanging on the wall behind him and conjuring a list of faux-Latin phrases on it with a wave of his wand. "With that in mind, let's begin."

* * *

_Some 300 years later:_

"You really were quite impressive, you know, Godric," said Rowena Ravenclaw, stirring her painted glass of wine. "I don't think I could have pulled it off half as well as you did."

"How do you know about all this, anyway?" said Gryffindor with a frown. "Did the students come up to you afterwards and give you detailed accounts, or did you sneak off from your own classes to spy on mine?"

"There was no need for either," said Salazar Slytherin with a grin. "You remember the problems we always used to have with vermin in the old castle; to sneak a small, serpentine spy into your classroom was the simplest thing in the world."

At this, Godric laughed so loudly that several of the monks whose picture frame they were sharing nearly stirred out of their drunken stupors. "Oh, you old rascal!" he said. "How I missed you after our little tiff!"

Slytherin laughed along with him. It wasn't a boisterous, hearty laugh like his friend's more like a hoarse cackle but it was as close to merry as Salazar Slytherin, or his painted effigy, had ever been wont to come.

"Whatever happened to that old hat, anyway, Rowena?" he said. "Did you throw it mercifully in the lake after Godric's death, or were you afraid that would poison our groundwater?"

Ravenclaw blinked, and stared at him. "You mean you didn't know?" she said. "All this time, you haven't known?"

"Known what?" said Slytherin, frowning.

Ravenclaw leaned back in her chair, with that storyteller's twinkle in her painted eyes that had made her original such a great History of Magic teacher. "Well," she said, "you remember, of course, that Godric could never get rid of that hat entirely. Helga always insisted that he wear it for special occasions: beginning-of-term addresses, Yule Balls, that sort of thing. He never really wanted to, of course, but he was too gallant ever to disappoint her and, of course," she added with a grin, "neither of us ever felt the need to provide him with a good excuse."

"Of course," said Slytherin, nodding.

"Well, when you left the school," said Ravenclaw, "we held a meeting to discuss whether there was any point in continuing to sort students into your House. Of course, I insisted that we had to keep at least part of your legacy alive, but Godric and Helga argued that, with only three of us around to pick our own students, we'd take all the best pupils for ourselves and Slytherin House would be left with the dregs."

Slytherin grunted. "Sometimes it feels that way anyway."

Ravenclaw smiled sympathetically at him; admittedly, his House had been getting a raw deal student-wise for the past decade or so. "So anyway," she said, "we agreed that, if we had a device of some kind that could analyse people's personalities objectively, without prejudice or favouritism, then it would be reasonable to maintain Slytherin House as a going concern. Well, for a reason that now escapes my memory, Godric happened to be wearing Helga's hat to this meeting, and I suppose he suddenly saw his chance"

The light broke in on Slytherin's mind. "You mean" he gasped, "you mean that that monstrosity of Helga's became _the Sorting Hat?_"

"It was the perfect solution," said Gryffindor. "Helga thought I was flattering her terribly by volunteering her old gift for such an important position, and I never had to wear the accursed thing again." He grinned. "You're not the only one who can be cunning when he needs to, Salasar."

Slytherin shook his head. "How did I miss that?" he said. "Three centuries I've been sharing the Headmaster's office with that Hat, and I never realised."

"Well, giving something a mind of its own does tend to alter its appearance somewhat," said Ravenclaw judiciously. "Even if it externally stays the same tattered wreck it was before, there's a different aura about it that" Then she broke off, and jerked her head up. "Wait a minute do you hear that?"

The two male Founders frowned, and listened intently. Sure enough, beneath the sound of wet snow beating on the corridor window and the snoring of inebriated monks, they could distinguish the sound of feet jogging through the paintings, accompanied by an old woman's voice muttering breathlessly in Norse. The next moment, the air on the far end of the room shimmered, and the plump, frizzy-haired form of Helga Hufflepuff appeared in the painting, panting heavily.

"Vell, _dere_ you tree are!" she gasped in between breaths. "I've been looking all t'rough de castle for you. Vat have you been doing down here?"

The other three Founders glanced at each other. "Oh, just reminiscing over a few glasses of wine," said Ravenclaw vaguely.

"Ah," said Hufflepuff, nodding. "Vine. Yes, vine sounds good just now." With that, she went over to one of the snoring monks, picked up the half-full goblet in front of him, and downed all its contents in a single gulp.

"Ah, yes," she said, sighing contentedly. "Yes, dat's much better."

Ravenclaw and Gryffindor stared speechlessly at her, and Slytherin shook his head in awe. "If I ever make fun of the Norse again," he whispered to Gryffindor, "just hit me really hard, all right?"

"Vell, anyvay," said Hufflepuff, replacing the goblet in front of the sozzled celibate, "de tree of you need to come up to de Headmaster's office. Kvintus vants to hear our views on an idea of his: someting about adding a Divination class to de curriculum next year."

"Divination?" Slytherin repeated. "How can you teach divination? I thought it was something that either you were born with or you weren't."

"Well, now," Gryffindor reflected, "perhaps a teacher couldn't really give you the gift, but he might be able to strengthen it if you already have it." He paused, and grinned at Slytherin. "Anyway, it makes a sort of sense."

"That's true," said Slytherin, with a grin of his own. "And certainly it would sort well with our other classes."

"_Il sort une brave notion, messieurs,_" Ravenclaw proclaimed solemnly. "_Sortons cet tableau, et allons faire en sorte qu'elle atteindra toute sorte de succs._"

At that, all three of them burst out laughing. For a full minute, Slytherin's hoarse cackle, Ravenclaw's silvery giggle, and Gryffindor's resonant guffaw echoed through the painted cell.

Hufflepuff stared at them in bewilderment. "Yust how much vine have you tree drunken?" she enquired.

"Never mind, Helga, never mind," said Gryffindor, wiping his eyes. "The Headmaster's office is that way, I believe?" He pointed to the eastern end of the picture.

Hufflepuff nodded.

"Then that way we shall go," said Gryffindor. "Come, Salasar, Rowena. Let us go assist Mr MacMurdagh in deciding the future of British divination."

"Don't you mean British sortilege?" said Ravenclaw with a grin.

And the three of them lost it again, and had to lean on a bemused Hufflepuff for support as the four of them staggered out of the picture frame toward the Headmaster's tower.


End file.
